A report on a news magazine website recently made a surprising disclosure about the incomes of certain types of online shoppers. Evidently, shoppers with higher incomes are more inclined to use the internet to make comparison price searches before they purchase. This fact seems to defy common sense since the poor need the price breaks the most. Research has shown that users of comparison shopping sites are reporting incomes above the average American household’s.



One surprising demographic is shoppers on eBay. While more than thirty percent of all internet surfers browse eBay at least monthly, more than half of eBay’s shoppers earn an income of more than seventy-five thousand a year. Three-quarters of its buyers are over the age of thirty-five. Another interesting statistic reported by regular search engines is terms like “cheap" or “discount" combined with a product name is used most frequently by the affluent searcher than not.

If you are shopping like the poor, what types of websites are you browsing? The poor spend their time on shopping sites for luxury big ticket electronics, exclusive label clothing, and rare automobiles. That is not to say that the poor are buying these items. Perhaps cyber window shopping is entertainment for them.

Now that you know how to shop like you are not poor, here are some suggestions on how you can maximize the resources of the internet when bargain hunting:

1. Find the top comparison shopping websites by making a search through your favorite search engine. Some examples of a comparison shopping website are Froogle, BizRate and PriceGrabber.

2. Make note of the low and average prices for items, but do not buy immediately. Return to your favorite search engine to find websites that may not be advertising on the comparison sites. Sometimes that is where you find the real bargains.

3. Look for evidence of stability in a merchant website as well as price. A reliable business will have a secure site and an offline presence such as a street address and a telephone number.

4. When comparing prices, do not forget to calculate the total costs with all the shipping, handling, and fees. You just may find that you will be better off in an offline store.

5. Before you go to a store, print the best prices for an item and carry it with you. Even if you prefer to buy in a local store, showing you are knowledgeable may put you in a better negotiating position.

With all the good deals to be found on the internet, is the neighborhood yard sale in danger of extinction? Never fear. In a five year span on the Craigslist website, garage sale ads have increased from two thousand per month to one hundred twenty thousand a month. Take advantage of the information on the internet to corner the best discounts wherever they may be found.